Module 11: Psychopathic Personality LECTURES Flashcards
(28 cards)
Media Portrayals and lay audience perceptions of Psychopathic Individuals:
A classic example is serial killers most people think of
the case of Ted Bundy who killed 100 women or
Hannibal the cannibal (charming and manipulative).
Not commonly thought of is female psychopathic
personality examples, it’s rare, glen close in fatal
the attraction was actually psychopathic and not BPD
(alludes to the diagnosis being hard to determine) she
had shallow emotional reactions which were used
strategically to get her way.
Mr. Rusefald who is a US politician.
Ant Deckman who commits non-violent crimes and he
asked a movie crew to make a documentary on him to
find out if he was in fact psychopathic (narcissism).
Explaining Psychopathy? From someone who has been convicted for serious crimes and scores high in psychopathic traits:
I didn’t have any feelings for anyone but myself.
All I cared about was me feeling good and I didn’t care
who I hurt in the process.
I was unempathetic; I don’t think I knew what empathy
was.
What is the core characteristic of a psychopathic personality?
Emotional detachment which refers to shallow affect and low empathy.
What is Bob Hare’s Model Four-Factor Model of Psychopathy?
(A) Emotional Detachment
e.g. low empathy and shallow affect.
(B) Interpersonal Problems
e.g. manipulation, interpersonal domination, using
people.
(C) Impulsive Lifestyle
e.g. reckless stimulation seeking, instability in life, no
set plan.
(D) Antisocial Behaviour
e.g. illegal or harmful behaviours which begin in
childhood (bullying, rumour spreading,
aggression, drug use, vandalism etc.).
What is Bob Levinson’s Model of Psychopathy?
Primary Psychopathy:
Emotional Detachment
e.g. low empathy and shallow affect.
Interpersonal Problems
e.g. manipulation, interpersonal domination, using
people.
= personality-based effective component
Secondary Psychopathy:
Impulsive Lifestyle
e.g. reckless stimulation seeking, instability in life, no
set plan.
Anti-social Behaviour
e.g. illegal or harmful behaviours which begin in
childhood (bullying, rumour spreading,
aggression, drug use, vandalism etc.).
= behavioural component
What is Scott Linienfields’s Model of Psychopathy?
Fearless Dominance:
Emotional Detachment
Interpersonal Problems
*fearless: not easily intimidated or threatened by other
people. Dominance: manipulative behaviour in order to
get what they want.
Self-Centred Impulsivity: Impulsive Lifestyle Antisocial Behaviours *narcissism and goal-directed behaviour at the expense of others.
What is Chris Patrick’s Triadic Model of Psychopathy?
Boldness/Meanness:
*personality-based
emotional detachment & interpersonal problems.
Meanness/Disinhibition:
impulsive lifestyle and antisocial behaviour
Is their a DSM or ICD-10 Diagnostic Criteria for Psychopathy?
No. The closest related diagnostic criteria we have are Anti-social PD and Disassociative PD. However, these criteria do not encompass all characteristics associated with a psychopathic personality (i.e., PCL-R scale).
For example, both ASPD and DPD does not include superficial charm, poor behavioural control, grandiose sense of self, parasitic behaviour, promiscuous sexual behaviour, a failure to accept responsibility and lack of suicide.
Only ASPD misses shallow affect, lack of empathy.
Only DPD misses failure to plan ahead, no psychosis and no manic episode.
The PCL-R misses no suicide, no delusions and no nervousness.
What are the two main ways to measure psychopathic personality?
(A) Clinical Interviews & Intensive File Review
(B) Self-Reports
which psychopathic personality scale is predominantly used in clinical interviews?
PCL-R
Which clinical scale of psychopathy is used on youth?
PCL-YV
Which clinical scale of psychopathy is used for clinical screening?
PCL:SV
*is a condensed scale with fewer items which is used for screening purposes.
Which clinical scale of psychopathy CAN be used without an extensive file review?
ICU. Which is used to measure callous-unemotional traits in children.
Can you conduct a clinical interview without an extensive file review?
No.
Can we measure Psychopathy using self-report measures?
Yes. We do not directly ask them questions related to whether or not they think they’re psychopathic. We ask questions about the traits, behaviours, thoughts and affects linked to high levels of psychopathy instead to avoid them lying or manipulating their answers.
Epidemiology of Psychopathy (Male vs Female):
(A) ASPD in Adults
(B) Prisoners
(C) In the General Population
(A) Adults with antisocial
behaviours: Men (16.5%)
Women (8.5%)
(B) Prisoners with a PCL-R
score above 30 i.e., high in
psychopathic traits: Men
(30-15%) Women (9-32%).
(C) PCL-R Scores in the
general population (can
not use PCL-R in the
general population but the
prevalence rate is
estimated to be) Men (less
that 1%) Women (not
enough stats).
*Psychopathy is NOT common in the general population. A large number of violent offenders incarcerated display psychopathic personality traits but NOT all of them are.
What percentage of the prison population meet the criteria for:
(A) ASPD
(B) ASPD and Psychopathy
• 50% of the prison population show antisocial personality traits. • Only a subset of the prison population who meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder will also meet the criteria for psychopathy. • This is due to the DSM Criteria for dissocial and antisocial personality disorders NOT capturing all the criteria listed by Cleckley to be characteristic of psychopathic individuals.
(11) Facts on Psychopathy:
• Psychopathy does overlap with other personality disorders such as antisocial, narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders. • Psychopathy is not a psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM or ICD-10; therefore, it is not referred to as a disorder. • People can be high is psychopathy and NOT meet the criteria for ASPD. • Psychopathy is an important field of research because people high in psychopathy have a higher and quicker rate of recidivism. • Psychopathic personality traits are continuous NOT categorical. We know this because ratings of psychopathic personality populations exhibit a normal distribution meaning people will score high and low on psychopathy. • Men’s distribution is flatter balanced distribution. In contrast, a higher rate of women score low and PCL-R > 20 is rare. • There is no clinical cut off at which we say someone is or isn’t psychopathic, we would say some score higher or lower on psychopathy but not view them as distinct groups. • Callous-unemotional traits are precursors of psychopathic traits: o We do use psychopathy as a term for children, we generally refer to callous unemotional traits. o CU’s are relatively stable over adolescence (high CU in childhood & high ASPD in adulthood). o Stability or persistence of CU’s depends on genetic rather than environmental factors.
Where does psychopathy come from?
(A) What are the Two
Predominant Theories?
(A) The fear deficit hypothesis:
a. Based on evidence which
demonstrates that highly
psychopathic individuals
react less to threats.
b. Lower physiological
responses i.e., startle
response, skin
conductance, heart rate
or blood pressure etc.
c. Brain areas related to
fight or flight response is
the amygdala. The
theory states that
people high in
psychopathy show a
deficit in amygdala
responses.
(B) The attention-allocation
hypothesis:
a. Argues that deficits of
psychopathy are
context-
dependent i.e., they do
not occur all the time
(globally).
b. Deficits occur when
these cues are
distractors i.e., in their
peripheral, and are not
directly relevant to goal-
directed behaviour.Evidence for the Fear-Deficit Hypothesis:
• The amygdala is important in learning, aversive classical conditioning, in which an individual’s learns to inhibit their behaviours in order to avoid an aversive consequence (i.e., punishment). • In Birbaumer et al. (2005) they paired a neutral face (NS) with an electric shock (US) to form a CR where their skin conductance of arousal when presented with the CS demonstrating they’ve learnt a negative association with the face and the shock. • Psychopathic individuals (blue) are flat, they show no signs of associative learning in which they’ve paired the neutral face with the aversive shock. • Looking at their brain activity we can see lots of activity in the amygdala and insula in healthy controls (emotional learning) but NOT in psychopaths.
*psychopaths react differently to healthy controls to threatening stimuli-muted fear response rather than absent response.
As a consequence, people high in psychopathy have high recidivism rates because prison is not an affective punishment, an associative pairing from their behaviour to prison does not occur.
Evidence for the Attention-Allocation Hypothesis:
*High and Low psychopathic individuals did not differ in performance their attention was on the threatening stimulus. Deficit only occurs in highly psychopathic individuals when their attention is distracted. *fear-potentiated startle response
*Brain regions associated with emotional learning such as the amygdala was reduced inactivation in highly psychopathic traits but only in the early alternative fours condition when their attention was distracted (Larson et al. 2013).
How can we measure fast processes? *that are relevant to sensory processing to identify and respond to threatening stimuli in our environment which has an inherent emotional component.
(A) EEG’s
a. Measure electrical
cortical activity in the
brain regions and
aggravate them into one
signal to analysis.
b. Activity signals are
derived from the whole
brain you cannot focus
on one brain region
when measuring activity.
c. Is a really good method
for observing immediate
activity following a
stimulus relative to FMRI
studies which are harder
to see.Example EEG Study on Psychopathy?
Example study: Eisenbarth et al. 2013.
• Faces are a common stimulus in our environment which humans are quick to process and are relevant to threat perceptions (approach/avoidance orientations). • Overtime, faces are perceived to be more sensitive to facial expressions than other potential threats like sharks etc. which are not commonly in our environment. • ANGRY FACES: o 170ms after a face is shown both high and low psychopathic individuals exhibit a negative reaction in brain activity. o Between 200-300ms after face exposure high psychopathic individuals show a shallower processing and emotional response to faces than low psychopathic individuals. • FEARFUL FACES: o We see a similar pattern in which individuals high in psychopathy show reduced brain reactivity relative to individuals low is psychopathy in response to fearful faces.
*In other words, this demonstrates that highly
psychopathic individuals show a muted
response to threatening stimuli in terms of
physiological arousal relative to individuals low
in psychopathy.
*psychopathic individuals show lower reactivity
to emotional cues when their not in their
attentional focus.
How do deficits and fear, arousal and emotion link to behaviour?
(A) There is a correlation
between low fear and
recidivism rates which is
theorized to inhibit
aversive classical
conditioning which
undermines the
effectiveness of prison as
a punishment.
(B) No Arousal, linked to
inhibitions to social
interactions (violent, and
non-violent interactions).
(C) No emotion linked to no
emotional empathy
(perceiving and responding
to other people’s distress).
